Description: This is a photograph of the first building constructed on the courthouse square. It was located where number 601 East Lacy is now located, but it extended over approximately halfway into the lot of the current number 603. This was Alexander Joost's store, known after the Civil War as the "Cheap Cash Store". Joost was an immigrant from France who had an earlier store at Fort Houston. As soon as the site was located for the county seat of the new Anderson County, he bought land there and prepared to moved. He rebuilt after the 1874 fire and again after the 1879 fire. Most of the conflagrations that were destroying entire blocks of the city of Palestine in the 1870s and 1880s were set by an incendiary who was eluding the police. Even though numerous merchants in New Town and Old Town suffered from these fires, Joost took them personally, especially when rumors were spread around town that he was having difficulty maintaining a good stock of merchandise. To combat this, he took out an ad in the Trinity Advocate to let his customers know he was still offering the best merchandise at the best prices. However, when his store ...

Description: One of the early "California Limiteds" entering the suburbs of Los Angeles, possibly dating from the late 1870's. The ten-wheeler, type 4-6-0, heading the train bears an original Santa Fe engine No. 54, indicative of ancient age. At the turn of the century the Santa Fe owned a large fleet of these locomotives: 478 ten-wheelers; these were versatile engines, known as "Jack of all Trades." However, no steam locomotives of this type were built to Santa Fe blueprints later than 1901. Observe the consist: the old weather-worn wooden railway post office car in the lead and the other open-platform wooden cars - all heated by potbellied iron stoves which burned wood or coal, and illuminated by kerosene. In this era, travel by rail had potential hazards but its popularity never waned.

Description: Illinois-native George Mansfield Dilley, the prominent railroad-building contractor who played an instrumental role in the expansion of railroads throughout Texas and the South, established this foundry in 1873, one year after the railroad arrived in Palestine. The George M. Dilley & Son Foundry, located adjacent to the I&GN tracks, at one time contained more than ten buildings. The enterprise manufactured some farm equipment and machinery, but its primary output was gray iron and brass castings for Texas railroads. The elder Dilley moved to Dallas in the 1880s, but the foundry continued to be run by his son, George Edward Dilley – one of Palestine’s most prominent citizens of the late 19th century. G.E. Dilley continued operations at the foundry until his death in 1932; his son Clarence V. Dilley then took over until his own death five years later. In the mid-1930s, the plant had an average payroll of about twenty thousand dollars, for a workforce of twenty to twenty-five men. The foundry ceased operations in the late 1930s. All that remains today are the frame office building, the nearby brick brass furnace building, and a lengthy iron fence which borders the property and faces May Street (which local historians ...